Three Czech Schools of Sacred Art in the Fin de Siècle Era

Abstract

This article is devoted to Catholic sacred visual art in the lands
of the Bohemian Crown between 1880 and 1914, developed
in three different types of art schools. The most influential
trend in Christian art in nineteenth-century Central Europe
was Nazarenism. Education according to its rules was conducted
by František Sequens, who ran a specialised studio at the
Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, called the “School of Religious
and Historical Painting” (1880–1896).
The Beuron School of Sacred Art, operating within the
Beuron Congregation of the Order of St Benedict, drew partly on
the impulses of Nazarenism. After their exile from Germany, the
congregation found their main home at the Emmaus Monastery
Na Slovanech in Prague from 1880 to 1886. The radical concept
of hieratic art of its founder, Desiderius Peter Lenz, was
not widely accepted, with a significant exception constituted
by the decoration of St Gabriel’s Church in Smíchov, Prague
(1889–1899). Lenz’s school was also completed by several Czech
students, who continued its tradition well into the 1920s and
1930s. František Bílek, an outstanding sculptor and universal
creator of Czech Art Nouveau,also founded his own art school,
which operated for almost a decade from 1899. All three schools declared their commitment to an idealistic
concept of art, but differed in their creative approach to
various aspects of religious experience: from idealised historical
narrative, through adorational exaltation of the sacred, to
symbolic evocation of mystical visions.